Price cuts just first step

Last week, Residential Programs and Services slashed prices on certain food items in residence hall dining facilities. Students campus-wide will enjoy long-awaited lower prices on their favorite grill and deli foods. The Italian eatery at the Foster-Gresham food court will also feature lower-priced items. \nRPS dining services runs several on-campus food courts, cafeterias, deli and grill express lines and convenience stores. Food courts offer restaurants such as Chester Fried Chicken, Sbarro's and Taco John's, and cafeterias serve traditional dining. Deli and grill spots offer sandwiches, pizza and salads. Convenience stores, like grocery stores, offer a wide variety of items for students. RPS also manages the Indiana Memorial Union restaurants and the Library Food Court.\nThe price cuts announced last week are a step in the right direction toward reducing the high prices RPS has charged students who eat on campus. The new prices are a welcome change for those who often struggle to budget their meal points. \nThese price cuts, however, raise a good question about why they were actually put in place.\n"The primary reason for these cuts is a change in food suppliers last July," Errol Huffman, RPS dining services business consultant, said in a Jan. 31 IDS article. "We are just now beginning to see the benefits from a change in suppliers that has afforded us lower prices."\nTherefore, the price cuts were not put in place because of student demand or concern. They were enacted only because of a change in RPS's suppliers.\nStudents often use their meal points to buy items such as laundry detergent, boxes of cereal and loaves of bread at campus convenience stores.\nA Sept. 2001 IUSA study compared the prices of the campus convenience store items with several local grocery store prices. The study found that a 30-item trip to the Willkie Center convenience store cost $108.40, while the same items at a grocery store would have cost $63.95.\nOf course there are overhead costs that need to go to RPS and the University, but hiking up the price of a bottle of Chi-Chi's salsa from $2.91 to $5.59? IU students and their parents spend enough, among other expenses, on tuition, parking and bus passes.\nBecause they pay more for convenience store items, students need to save more when they buy their actual meals.\nAlthough RPS has not raised the price of student meal plans in the last four years, it is obvious that more price cuts on individual items need to be made in different areas, especially the convenience stores.\nSo RPS, please continue the much-welcomed price cuts. \nStaff vote: 12 - 0 - 2\nyes - no - abstain